Doug Dockery - Something Doesn't Smell Quite Right

schedule 4 years ago

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45 Mins

Talk

Beginner

Ten signs (smells?) that your Agile transformation isn't going as well as you think it is. And, more importantly, what to do about the 'smells' so that your teams can create the value that your organization desires and deserves.

Sue Johnston - Think "renovation" not "transformation"

schedule 4 years ago

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45 Mins

Workshop

Beginner

If you've ever been through a home renovation, you know what a massive disruption it can be. Dust is everywhere, your mid-day quiet coffee ritual is displaced with the sweet sounds of hammer-to-nails and saw-to-wood and some (or all?) of your house is pretty much unusable.

When Agile Transformation is used as a trigger for change, it's going to render some parts of your organization unusable until some progress is made.

In a reno, we tolerate the upheaval and turmoil because we know that, when it's done, we'll have a better place to live.

In this session, with help from Sue Johnston, Jason Little and Andrew Annett, you'll learn to apply the metaphor of Organizational Remodelling to implementing and guiding change in your organizations.

schedule 4 years ago

60 Mins

Workshop

Intermediate

Ken Schwaber, a co-creator of scrum, says that only 25% of teams trying Scrum actually realize the gains they had hoped for. Another informal poll shows teams callling themselves "Scrumbut", "Scrumerfall", or "Scrumish" than actually claim to successful!

It is as if something conspires to make Scrum ineffective.

Let's get real. Scrum is designed to expose problems. It does not, by itself, solve the problems. In theory, Scrum provides a framework for the team to work through the solution themselves. In practice, politics, rhetoris, and lack of training often get in the way.

This talk is about understanding common Scrum problems and breaking through ruts.

In this conversation Matthew Heusser and Wade Wachs will discuss the heart of Scrum, where it goes wrong, how testing can enable Scrum success - and how team members can improve their visibility and role while contributing to Scrum and team long-term success.

Diane Zajac - The Business Analyst: How To Be More Than a Proxy

schedule 4 years ago

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180 Mins

Workshop

Beginner

As a business analyst on an agile team, do you spend your time gathering decisions from Product Owners (or stakeholders) and passing them on to development teams? Are you tired of simply being a “proxy without power?” What can you do to boost your impact and become invaluable to your team?

In this workshop, Diane Zajac-Woodie demonstrates how any team can benefit from the communication and facilitation skills of an experienced BA. Through some experiential exercises, you will learn what impact collaboration has on results and why requirements are just as important as ever. Diane also teaches you how to document requirements so people will actually read them. Using Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD), you will practice writing requirements that describe the exact behaviors that you expect in a format that everyone understands.

Be inspired to embrace your role in an agile environment and leave with new techniques that encourage more cohesive teams and ultimately lead to higher quality software.

Dana Pylayeva - Gamifying Retrospectives for Distributed Teams

schedule 4 years ago

60 Mins

Workshop

Beginner

If you could single out just one Agile practice which gives the most bang for your buck, that would undeniably be a retrospective!

Retrospective allows a team to inspect and adapt it’s process. For a team that is distributed across different locations and time zones retrospective becomes a must!

This workshop will examine the ways of using elements of Gamification to reenergize retrospectives and help the team to become better.

We will looks closely at some of the most common retrospectives anti-patterns. As part of this hands-on workshop attendees get to experience, compare and contrast a number of facilitation frameworks that they can bring back to their organizations.

This session proposal is a fourth iteration on this topic. It combines some of the ideas from Gamification lightning talk ( Agile2014) and incorporates feedback from Opens Space sessions that were facilitated at Agile Day NYC, Global Scrum Gathering Berlin and NYC Scrum User Group.

schedule 4 years ago

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90 Mins

Workshop

Intermediate

This highly engaging and dynamic workshop will focus on examining the ways to optimize a flow of work through the entire organization. Participants will learn how to expand traditional boundaries of a Scrum team by including Operations, Release Engineers, and Security roles. Inspired by ideas from “The Phoenix Project” and “The Goal", this workshop will use elements of Gamification to make a learning experience fun.

The participants will be using LEGO blocks and chocolates to learn about theory of constraints, continuous flow, minimizing waste, amplifying the feedback loop, leveraging the power of cross-functional teams and multi-skilled team members to improve overall effectiveness in responding to the market change and delivering value.

This workshop has been recently presented at Toronto Agile and Software ( Rating - 8.2 out of 10)

schedule 4 years ago

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180 Mins

Workshop

Intermediate

"It's often better to be certain and wrong [about project schedules] than uncertain and right." - DeMarco and Lister, Waltzing With Bears

As much as the agile manifesto talks about “responding to change”, sooner or later, someone has to write a check to pay for things — and that person would probably prefer to avoid unbounded uncertainty. This workshop works through issues of cost, and risk, including how to communicate team performance. Use a combination of simulation, discussion, and presentation, Matt Heusser, Joseph Ours, and Damian Synadinos will cover various models for planning, from stories, to velocity, project comparison, #NoEstimates, Guru Method, and Predictive models. You'll leave with a firstfull of ideas to try, along with specific information of the strengths and weakness of each approach, including both technical and social angles.

Steve Rogalsky - Your Design is only Mostly Dead

schedule 4 years ago

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90 Mins

Workshop

Intermediate

As an enthusiastic problem solver and solution designer you were thrilled to be asked to {design the UI | architect the system | design the kanban board | solve the bottleneck | plan the office mini-golf course | storm the castle}. You researched the problem, weighed the options, considered the alternatives, and put your best effort into the final deliverable. Your presentation to the team was flawless - not one PowerPoint slide with more than 5 words on it! But, while everyone knew that your solution was awesome, it was ultimately trashed, warped, abused, tortured, discarded, and ignored.

What happened? You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - the most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia" - but only slightly less well-known is this: "Your design sucks because it isn't mine."

At this point you must be wondering - "If we only had a wheelbarrow (i.e. Design Studio), that would be something." Join me for a workshop on using the Design Studio Approach to achieve effective collaborative design. Have fun storming the studio!

schedule 4 years ago

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90 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

Improvisational Comedy (also called Improv) is a form of theater where the performance itself is created in the moment. Successful improv involves using a variety of skills and techniques, which allow performers to quickly adapt to a constantly changing environment and new information. Now, reread the last sentence, but replace “improv” with “testing”. This mildly interactive presentation will highlight a few of the many similarities between improv and testing. Creative metaphors and critical analysis will provide novel and notable ways to think about testing. From stage fright to test summary report, and everything in between…attendees will laugh, learn, and leave with knowledge to help Improv(e) Your Testing!

Omar Bermudez - High Performance team journey: Developing Trust

schedule 4 years ago

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90 Mins

Workshop

Intermediate

Trust between team members is critical for performance. Trust is a value that many people share, but how they demonstrate it and when they offer it varies widely. Even if people say they trust each other in general, there are often conditions where that trust can erode and become and unspoken barrier that affects the team.

When listening to people talk about trust, be particularly aware of the behaviors they identify as demonstrating trust. This is a fundamental place where misunderstandings occur. Most people value trust, but the behaviors they use to show it can be different and even opposite. In addition, some people show trust differently depending on where they are. What they do at home or with family may not be what they do at work. Identify and talking the implications of those behaviors is the first step toward discovering acceptable ways to deal with differences.During this workshop you will realize the different ways how people express trust. You will become aware about behaviors and ways to interpret them.

schedule 4 years ago

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90 Mins

Workshop

Intermediate

When we simplify the Agile Manifesto’s “Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools” we get “People over Process”. Agile is about people. Join us for a deep dive into how to build safety and trust to drive engagement and results.

Sadly, many organizations are mired in organizational debt: mistrust, politics and fear. Changing the process won’t fix this. We need to go to the root of it - to find a way to talk about and shift to a healthier culture.

In this interactive workshop you will learn to see the dynamics of human systems and where to apply leverage to foster change using the VAST (Vulnerability, Authentic Connection, Safety and Trust) model.

schedule 4 years ago

90 Mins

Workshop

Beginner

While many people have a copy of Eric Ries’s book, The Lean Startup, very few seem to be fully applying the ideas.

This hands on workshop is based on learnings from mentoring and hosting all five Lean Startup Machine events in Toronto (a weekend conference to bootstrap Lean Startup into participants).

We've discovered that most people who implement Lean Startup principles don't go lean enough. Come to the workshop and get a taste of what you’re missing. You'll learn what it really means to get lean.

This session is an intense session. Participants will be very active and involved the entire time. They will also be getting out of the building (conference room) and talking to potential customers to learn as much as they can in as short a period of time as possible.

We'll be using a stripped down board that walks people through the validation process quickly and easily. There will be about a 10-15 minute set up and then teams will form and get to work using our prepared starting point and validating using our diet lean startup validation board.

schedule 4 years ago

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45 Mins

Case Study

Intermediate

With growing market demand of agile programs and projects, agile is providing leading edge to clients in racing industry to put them in the driver seat as they steer the fast lanes of Big Data and Social Media including Facebook and Twitter. Imagine fast cars are racing, while live viewers are feeling the excitement as they are also engaging in the conversations through social media. There are fans who may not be at the event but are part of these conversations as they do not want to miss a beat. Engaging fans, viewers and media effectively in the fast-paced and dynamic environments are the challenges that Traditional development methods struggle to manage. To manage these challenges and develop/deploy solutions in short order we rely on Agile methods that combine innovative, consistent framework that can be tailored based on size, complexity combined with Extreme Programming (XP) engineering practices. The complexities of data mining, organizing and presenting in a visually appealing fashion is a mammoth task. Not to mention, the presentation should be easily translated into actionable and meaningful intelligence using smart dashboards. Smart dashboards enable trend, tone and sentiment analyses. This social business solution is based on the Agile life cycle software development method that embraces the Agile Manifesto and core agile techniques of lean engineering and emphasis on delivering working software as quickly as possible to maximize Return on Investment (ROI).

Omar Bermudez - Invest in the future: Coach your team

schedule 4 years ago

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180 Mins

Workshop

Intermediate

Today's Leaders need to take desision every day. Coach people is a investment in the long run. If you need result rigth away, you maybe are given the solution to your team very fast (or tell them what to do). It is not bad, but you are sacrifiying the team future doing this. You also are creating a dependency to you. How to go out from this pattern? how to grow the team doing coaching?

This workshop is a complete experience workshop. It enables today's leaders to understand and develop the attitudes, skills and behaviours required for the day to day informal coaching of others. Participants develop their understanding of the essential attitudes and skills of effective coaching through a sequence of short tasks/games.

schedule 4 years ago

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60 Mins

Workshop

Intermediate

Abstract: Design Thinking refers to the methods and processes to investigate complex problems in highly uncertain systems. This workshop is about how to use this iterative process of observation, ideation and implementation to better understand organisation's culture and create reasons for people in the organisation to embrace Agile.

Summary: This workshop is about how to use a design thinking process an techniques to better understand organisation's culture and minimize resistance to change in the creation of an Agile culture. The strategy is to combine empathy for the context, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality to analyze and fit solutions to the context. This solutions are aimed to create reasons for people in the organisation to embrace Agile. You'll also learn some useful design thinking techniques that you can use in your retrospectives!!

Description: Design Thinking refers to the methods and processes to investigate complex problems in highly uncertain systems, acquiring information, analysing knowledge, and positing solutions. This workshop is about the usage of this process to better understand organisation's culture and minimise resistance to change in the creation of an Agile culture. The strategy is to combine empathy for the context, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality to analyse and fit solutions to the context. This solutions are aimed to create reasons for people in the organisation to embrace Agile. This iterative process of observation, ideation and implementation can be integrated within your retrospectives and also applied outside IT to create a continuous improvement engine for organisational culture in organisations.

Jason Little / Mike Edwards - 3 Techniques for Architecting Change

schedule 4 years ago

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90 Mins

Workshop

Intermediate

Let's face it, when organizations want to "go Agile", they really want help solving a problem they can't quite put their finger on. Some of the time they may buy a tool and call themselves Agile. Other times, they'll implement a few practices but not much more. There are no shortage of tools, methods and techniques for installing Agile and there are an equal number of failure stories. At the end of day, Agile is simply a trigger for an organizational change.

In this session you'll learn 3 techniques that will help you navigate through complex change by working on a real problem with your peers. After all, a consultant or coach is only going to take you so far!

Guy Royse - Putting the D&D in TDD

schedule 4 years ago

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240 Mins

Workshop

Beginner

Are you tired of TDD workshops that make you do boring things like calculate bowling scores and prime factors or demonstrate how to win at the game of life? If so, this is the session for you In this TDD workshop we will be building the domain model for EverCraft -- a new MMORPG from Blizzards of the Coast. We have lots of story cards prepared covering features from combat to magic, classes to spells, and races to items. Plus, we'll be defining some of these cards during the session in case you want that +9 knife of ogre slaying or enjoy casting magic missile at the darkness.

This workshop is language agnotisic and for all levels of developers. The focus is on TDD and emergent design but pair programming will be covered as well. The only requirement is that you bring a laptop and that you be able to test-drive you code with your language of choice. When you are done you will emerge a better programmer for the experience but there is small chance you will have a craving for Cheetos and Mountain Dew.

Steve Ropa - Building Software Craftsmen

schedule 4 years ago

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60 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

There has been a lot of talk lately about Software Craftsmanship. Most of this talk has been centered around how to take existing, skilled programmers and turn them into Craftsmen. What about those who are just entering the field? In this talk, we will explore a new approach to fulfilling the entire journey from Apprentice to Master, both from a personal and organizational level. We will also look at how to get such a program started, and how to bring the existing team along.

Jason Little / April Jefferson - Creating Alignment for Agile Change

schedule 4 years ago

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60 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

Sometimes people in organizations feel as though Agile has been pushed on them. They end up going through the motions, without any real sense of ownership of what they are doing. Instead of actually implementing meaningful changes, organizations end up doing "Agile in name only" by slapping Agile labels on existing processes. Then Agile is blamed for "not working". This isn't an Agile problem. It's an alignment and ownership problem. In this session, through theory and multiple real-world case studies, you'll learn how to co-create change by involving the people affected by the change in the design of the change.

Daniel Davis - Learning Agility over Learning Agile

schedule 4 years ago

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45 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

We've all caught some of the hype around "agile" and most have at least heard (if not directly seen) its benefits. In this talk, we are going to dive deep into one key aspect - Continual Learning. We'll discuss how it has become a staple for our modern day technical careers; how if you aren't growing, adapting, and evolving you're stagnating and how eventually you won't outgrow your job - it will outgrow you. We'll then investigate the factors of Learning Agility and explore ways that we can use it to help us not just survive, but thrive in our current environments.